Hasta La Creative!

Marketers often get accused of creating hype. But when it comes to big data, they’re facing the same challenge as everyone else in separating fact from fiction. Like “the cloud” before it, “big data” is the latest IT buzzword being twisted and reshaped to fit all sorts of agendas. In Gartner’s Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle 2012, big data is nearing the peak of inflated expectations. Underlying the squishy definitions, though, is the growing role that data plays in helping marketers identify, understand and communicate with target audiences.

Advertising Age Research’s latest report, “Smart Marketing Using Big Data,” explains how to bring big data into marketing operations, how to find and attract the talent you need to implement big-data strategies, how to build an infrastructure that uses big-data techniques, whether to outsource or keep operations in-house and tips for safely sharing data with agencies and vendors. (Order it here.)

Thanks to advancements in the ability to collect, store, manage, analyze and access vast quantities of data, “We’re able to now do what the industry was talking about 10 years ago,” manipulating and leveraging large amounts of disparate data in a cost-effective way, says Andy Fisher, chief analytics officer for Merkle, a customer-relationship-marketing agency. “The dream is becoming possible.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com